St Valentine's Day
by purinpuff
Summary: Just some Yugo and little bitty Bakuryu cuteness. Yugo's single and depressed, Kakeru's creepy and clueless. Misunderstandings ensue.


Ok, this was based on a scene that was going to come up eventually. When ZedaÕs contest came up, I decided it would work as its own story. While writing itÉ. It became a little twisted, as you will see. It is liked, though, so I decided to add it. I hope you enjoy it, too.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"So you're our little ninja..." a man once sighed when he saw him walk by. "Wait a minute. I have an errand for you."

Who was he to refuse? The carrying out of shady assignments was his sole purpose, after all. 

The older man glanced around cautiously before handing him something very unusual he had never seen before. A new and exotic smell floated up from the brightly colored object placed in his hands. Was it an explosive? Then again, it smelled like something that was possibly edible. There were names written on it. How strange...

"Here's what I want you to do..."

It was a very simple mission, one that did not even require him to change out of the white frock he wore almost every day. It was, basically, to trade one strange smelling package for another, the latter of which he now held under his arm. Crouched behind a vending machine, he waited for a young woman in a pink sweater adorned with red hearts to approach the vacant office. She did come, just as the man had predicted, and she did indeed carry a package like his own under her arm. 

Now was the time for stealth to come into play. He readied himself as the woman unlocked the door and zipped right in, leaving only a slight draft as any sort of sign of his presence as he just brushed past her legs. Now, the key was staying out of her line of sight. He slunk around, being one with the shadows, and the moment she turned around after placing her package on the table, he made the switch.

However, he was not able to sneak out with as much stealth as he would have liked. This time, she noticed the suspicious change in the air by her ankles and her eyes immediately found him. Luckily, he had already stashed the original package behind the vending machine.

"What are you doing there, little one?" she cooed at him with a somewhat melancholy tone. The deceived intern nearly closed the door, but then she smiled at him and went back inside to retrieve what she thought she had left behind. He sensed no suspicion from her, and so he decided to stay and play along as if he had only happened to bump into her.

Curious as to what was inside the package, he eyed her as she opened it while going on about how he would not know what today was all about. Inside it were... Small explosives? What were those brown things she seemed so happy about?

"I'm sure he won't mind if one of them is missing," she whispered, placing it in his hand, "This is between us, okay?"

She giggled watching him examine it and give it a careful sniff. "It's chocolate, See?" She took one out of the box and gently nibbled at the corner, savoring the little bit of brown inside her mouth. So it was food... But that was a very unusual lunch box. Her energy did not fade at all while she urged him to try his share. Whatever it was, it must have been safe or very slow killing.

"Go on!" The lady then took it out of his hand and brought the morsel to his lips and popped it into his mouth. Whatever it was, it was both bitter and sweet and it melted with his body heat. Inside was a gooey center with an overdose of fruity sweetness trying to hide an unavoidable acrid flavor. He attempted to savor the first flavor he had tasted as he swallowed the morsel.

The woman pat him on the head, sighing, "I suppose that's your first Valentine, right, big guy?" 

_"Valentine..."_ That was actually rather nice, he thought to himself, just before a sharp stabbing pain shot up from his gut. The world spun around a few times and blurred and darkened before finally going pitch black.

~*~*~*~*~*~

There was pressure on his back. The motions became a little more violent and frustrated along with the voice that was almost a whisper at first.

"Kakeru... Kakeru... Hey, Kakeru!"

He responded by pulling the sheets over his head and silently tunneling to the other side of the bed. "Oh, no you don't!" The older voice called out. Both hands reached out to tickle either side of the little mound under the covers, forcing it to tunnel right to the edge of the comforter. There, the little critter was immediately snatched up. This creature of a child with a big tuft of fur so dark it was almost blue squirmed in the wolf's grasp, still tunneling in its sleep. Finally, the boy's eyes opened and looked up whilst the child yawned and wiped the sand from them. With his usual unreadable expression, he stared into the face of his guardian, who sighed, "Honestly, Kakeru... Why d'you hafta be so weird?" 

Looking back into the eyes as bright gold as his own, he tried to make sense out of that stare for what must have been the thousandth time. All combined in a somewhat blank gaze were what could possibly made it a face of curiosity, accusation, fear, confusion, knowledge of something unknown to all else, complete and utter ignorance, and all that pleasant stuff. Yugo Ohgami shook his head to break his focus on the child. By now, he should have known better than to try and make any sense out of him.

"Breakfast is almost ready. You'd better hurry up and get dressed if you don't want to be late for school." The child's bright little eyes blinked at the reminder of the existence of the rest of the world and he immediately hopped out of Yugo's arms and to his drawer. The wolf left him to dress himself and moved back to the kitchen, where a nice pot of glop was brewing. 

_Mmm.... glop..._

He never cared for the stuff. Still, such was energy food, and his trainer was forcing oatmeal down his throat to power his heavily muscled and scarred body in his boxing matches. After all, oats were the food of racehorses, and were they not powerhouses?

_But I'm no horse... I'm a wolf!_

He could almost hear his father nagging, "But you are a human, too," in the back of his mind. Yugo shook his head again, tossing his brown hair in disgust. Pop was such a moron. He was never around. What kind of wolf abandons his pack? He was always doing some top secret nonsense with Alan Gado, and what good did that do? It only got him killed! And then Mom.... poor Mom...

Yugo lightly touched the two scars over his nose and face that overlapped into an X shape. Wolves are miserable alone and without a family. This he knew all too well. Then again, he reminded himself while ladling hot cereal into two bowls, he was not exactly a lone wolf now. He had a puppy to raise.

He turned around and, with a sudden yell, almost spilled the oatmeal. "K-Kakeru! What do you think you're doing?" 

Kakeru merely stared, a little confused. He was, after all, not doing anything other than standing directly behind the amateur boxer. Yugo put down the bowls and then leaned over, clutching at his chest. That kid was going to give him a heart attack one of these days. He certainly had a way of moving around without making any noise at all. Surely enough, the next time Yugo looked up he had seemed to teleport into his seat. From his chair, that pale and starved-looking child stared at him once more with that empty gaze, never talking, hardly doing anything...

The puppy was not very good company, he reminded himself. He was still miserably lonely. The man cringed when he glanced at the calendar. Good God - was it Valentine's Day? Well, that was great... That was just swell, just _perfect_ and oh so convenient. Letting out a cry that might have sounded like a faint mournful howl, he threw back his head and slammed himself onto the table, having forgotten what was right on front of him. Embarrassed, he remained in that position without moving while stewing in his own anger and oatmeal. Kakeru looked at him for a few seconds before throwing himself into his bowl as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Was it his fault?

Kakeru's thoughts paced worried circles in his brain as he walked with Yugo to school. He, in short, lived because of Yugo. His earliest memory was of fire and Yugo. When he knew and felt absolutely nothing at all, Yugo was the nervously smiling one who put food in his mouth and tried to get some sort of reaction from him, even if it meant making a complete and utter fool of himself.

The first true emotion in his limited memory must have been confusion. That other man, the man with the yellow hair and the big mark over his eye, always kept a close eye on him. He would stand in one corner and glare at him. "I know who you are," or, "I know what you're planning," he would say. He had overheard him telling Yugo he was going to kill them both. 

As for Yugo, he still brought him things and, though something about Kakeru seemed to make him uneasy as well, treated him in such a way that he felt a little different somehow. Sure, then it was more confusion, but now... Maybe it was still confusion even now. The feelings had no words to describe them. The concepts of family and companionship that the lonely Yugo seemed to value so much, though he had none of his own, had started the very slow process of the waking of the rest of Kakeru.

Without Yugo, in Kakeru's mind, he would have been standing in the flames and heat and mindlessness for all eternity.

What would have become of him without Yugo?

A cold rush caused him to shudder and he reached out with one small hand to grasp Yugo's large fingers. He knew his guardian seemed a little uneasy whenever he held his hand, but he needed to do that. Without him, he felt so icy cold and scared... He felt as if he was on the verge of some the knowledge of something so horrible it would separate him from Yugo and these feelings completely.

Yugo started a little when he felt his hand. He turned and gave him a quick smile, but it was short-lived. His lowered eyes went right back to the sidewalk. 

Yugo had been troubled since this morning for some reason. He was obviously distressed, upset over something... or someone. Was it his fault? 

Kakeru lived because of Yugo. The thought that Yugo was upset over him- no, on second thought, it seemed that he was expecting something he was not getting- made his insides condense and squirm inside him. What did he want of him? Whatever it was, Kakeru was sure he would do what Yugo wanted from him. It was the least he could do for him. 

If only he could know what that something was...

He would do anything, _anything, _for Yugo, if he could only get a hint of some sort.

"Stupid day..." he grumbled, "...makin' guys like me sit around waiting..."

Kakeru lowered his head.

"... an' making us look at everyone else with their stupid chocolates..."

Chocolates? Why did that word ring a bell from whatever happened before Yugo... And why did that bell sound so frightening?

The older man, unaware he was mumbling that loudly, snorted, _"I'd _like some chocolates..." He sighed. "But nobody cares about me, I guess..."

The two reached their destination, and Yugo gave the boy a light pat on the shoulder outside the school gate. He strolled away, leaving the shocked child standing as still as a statue while lively children rushed to get in before the bell rang.

Yugo wanted to die?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The punching bag hit the board with less than the usual amount of force today. The boxer shook his head and let out a frustrated breath of air for letting this get to him yet again. Sure, the powers that be on the let's-make-holidays board just _had _to import St. Valentine's day, the day on which little kids get teased for liking someone if they give treats to the opposite sex or teased for being gay if they give treats to their close friends, the day on which desperate youths wait for their crushes to give them the traditional chocolates or cards, only to get nothing except, perhaps, a glimpse of them kissing the one they really liked all along. And now... it was the day to sigh over the complete lack of any sort of companionship, only to be reinforced by White day, when he was to sigh over not giving marshmallows to the nonexistent woman who had not given him chocolates on St. Valentine's day.

Yugo had always told himself he did not care. All he wanted was to be a professional boxer. Then, surely, the ladies would come to him, but, alas, things were not so easy. Training and climbing the social ladder to his goal (Why did _everything _have to have some sort of twisted politics to it?) was very time and energy consuming. Raising the puppy took away any other sort of free time he might have had. Sure, the little guy was cute and he made him smile... but at times he was so mysterious and hard to understand, he felt lonely nonetheless. 

Did Kakeru even care at all for him? That blank and empty stare sometimes looked angry or bored or annoyed... at least to Yugo it did. He chuckled when he remembered old Gado wondering how he could make anything out anything at all in that nondescript face. Something in him connected with the boy, and sometimes it seemed Kakeru connected with him as well, or at least the wolf liked to tell himself that.

There was one more thing that was going to be rubbed into him today other than loneliness.

"Oi, Ohgami!"

Enter Tsukino Shiro.

"'Morning, Tsukino..."

Shiro Tsukino was the deceptively lightweight pro boxer-to-be, the other student of Yugo's trainer. His bleached hair, which seemed to be getting a little longish like Yugo's these days, flopped to and fro with his head gestures as he talked, and the deep black of his eyes could not hide the liveliness that lit them up from behind.

"So, you got a date tonight?" he said with a wink and a light poke with his elbow, "Need me to babysit?"

He just _had _to bring that up.

"Nah."

"Why you sound so down, Ohgami? Got dumped? Turned down?"

"I haven't exactly been meeting girls, okay?"

The fake blond paused slightly and fingered his can of juice quietly. "You don't like 'em or something?"

Maybe Yugo was being paranoid. His friends asked him stuff like that when he was in high school, and he never suspected anything. However, there was something... odd about the way Shiro said it; Yugo was sure of it.

"Shiro..." He hissed.

Shiro reassuringly placed his hand on his arm and said what should have been comforting: "Well, no matter what happens, you always have me, right?"

"..."

"Oh dear, is it that time already? I'm not even warmed up..."

_Oh, no... There he goes... He always changes right on front of me... Acting like it's nothing. I know you really don't think it's nothing. He puts on that tank top... he _always _wears a tank top! And then he... Oh, GOD! He bends down to stretch right in my face on purpose, doesn't he? And there he goes exhaling like that... Oh, and now he's wiping his head to show me just how sweaty he is, isn't he? _

"But, anyway, It's too bad we'll be in different weight divisions, huh?"

"Um... huh?" Yugo had not been paying attention to anything he might have been saying.

"I mean, I'd like to face you on more than just this practice ring."

_I'm sure you would._

"You're my favorite partner," he continued to say, "No matter who I'm facing, I'm always thinking of you... how you'd react to each of my moves..."

Yugo crossed his legs and shifted nervously, wondering when their trainer would arrive.

"It's so exhilarating, isn't it? You ache all over afterwards, and you're tired and sore as hell, but you feel good anyway, especially when it was with your friend."

At this point, Yugo started to choke on his canned coffee. Shiro was completely oblivious to this, and he greeted their trainer, who had been running a little late. Yugo's near brush with death (it certainly felt like one) prevented him from hearing Mr. Miyaki telling Shiro to look for some old equipment hidden in the depths of the boxing department's storage closet.

"You okay, Ohgami?" Shiro finally voiced upon seeing his friend in distress.

"Y- yeah, I'm fine," he wheezed, still clutching his chest.

"Ah, ok. Say, you wanna join me in the closet?"

In the span of two seconds, Yugo's body turned to glass, then sand, then glass again.

".... Yugo?"

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SHIRO," He finally screamed in his face, "STOP HITTING ON ME!"

Shiro, Mr. Miyaki, and anybody else in the vicinity turned their heads in unison to see Yugo storm out of the room.

"Was it something I said?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today had something to do with cards and candies and pink and red things. Some children only handed them to certain people. Some girls gave cards and thing to their close friends. Some children handed only one out and were laughed at when caught. Others handed cards out to everyone, whether they knew him or not. Kakeru held one such card in his hand, which had a design of hearts and a happy little bumble bee next to some sort of noncommittal pun dealing with bees and the buzzing sound they made and being a "Valentine."

He had also gotten his hands on some sweets, heart-shaped candies everyone sneaked when the teacher was not looking. They tasted awful.

Occasionally, he smelled that smell, the one he knew was dangerous. It was the poison Yugo wanted.

Why did he want to die? Had Kakeru not been good enough? Had he not thanked him enough for all he had done?

Had he been selfish all these years? Yugo wanted to die, and there had to have been something Kakeru could do for him, but it was too late to save him. The only want Yugo voiced was death, and to make him happy was to give him his means of death.

The pages of his notebook became wrinkled and sweat-soaked in his palms. He did not want Yugo to die.

"Ohgami? Kakeru Ohgami?" 

The boy behind Kakeru gave him a quick kick, and the class snickered when he realized the teacher was calling on him.

There was wetness on his cheeks. He looked down at the wet spots on his notebook in worry while feeling his face.

"Do you need to go to the bathroom to wash up, dear?"

She was talking about his face, right? Whatever it was, he had to find out. He rushed out of his seat and ran right to the restroom, and the heat built up behind his stinging eyes. His breathing was becoming strange, and he quickened his pace to see what was wrong with him.

In the privacy of the restroom, he looked at his red eyes and the tears they painfully leaked. What was happening to him? He had started to think about Yugo, and...

He balled up little fists on front of his eyes and let his body do as it pleased with his emotions. Kakeru curled up next to the sink and buried his face into his knees. His voice had not made any sound in who knows how long, but now it put itself to use in the form of small whimpers as he cried into the fabric of his clothes. Why did Yugo have to die? What had he done wrong, and why did he not see it before it was too late?

He purposely quieted himself when he heard footsteps in the hall. He could not help but overhear a conversation between two older students. Dwarfed by the sinks and the trash bin, the boys did not notice the child hidden right under their noses. One told the other that Michiko Touya had given him a card and chocolates. The other gave an amused and somewhat disgusted reaction. She was so clumsy, he joked, she had made a fool of herself trying to sneak it into his bag. And when he saw her, she tripped and fell flat on her face. Maybe if that little piggy lost some weight, she would actually get a boyfriend someday. 

"She probably got you a little midget box of chocolates 'cause she was broke after stuffing her face." 

"Heh, yeah..." the other snorted, and a small item fell into the oversized black trash can, where there were many wet paper towels to cushion its fall.

When they had left and he was in silence once more, Kakeru stood up on his toes to peer into the garbage to find a heart-shaped card which matched a small heart-shaped box. He picked it up and sniffed it, recognizing the scent of death. This was it.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Yugo had never felt so alone in his life.

He had made a fool out of himself on front of Mr. Miyaki and Tsukino and the entire gym, and now Kakeru was even more silent than his silent self, if that was possible. As they walked, Yugo felt like there was a dark cloud casting its dark grey shadow over them. He did not feel like trying to strike up the usual futile conversation with the mute child. Kakeru simply hug his head and plodded home with an expression that looked so unusually sad. Yugo sighed. What had he done now?

"You know," he finally said at home while removing bags of instant curry from the boiling water, "you could live with someone else if you want..."

Kakeru's eyes went wide. Yugo did not notice. His own sad eyes were concentrated on pouring the contents over rice without looking at the puppy to whom he had become so attached.

"I could... I could call up Gado. He could find someone... you know, one of our kind... who could take better care of you, I'm sure of it. I mean, isn't there that Nonomura woman? She's a mother... You probably need a mother more than you need a... well... whatever I am..."

He placed the two plates on their table, noting how Kakeru's gaze followed him, before sitting across from his pup. That expression surely must have meant that he was waiting for him to say this for a long time. He had to work to keep himself from choking up.

"So... don't be afraid to tell let me know if you don't like it here. Just let me know how you feel, okay?" He then sighed a "God, I'm pathetic..." into his food before pushing a little around with his fork.

Just then, something red came into his peripheral vision. He looked up and saw Kakeru leaning over the table with a desperate look in his eye. He was straining to hold a little heart-shaped box towards him. Yugo slowly took the box from him and opened the card attached to him. In it was a short little attempt at a poem, with the names in the "To" and "From" boxes crossed out and replaced with "Yugo" and "Kakeru." The words were simple and not the best poem written on earth, but they conveyed the message Kakeru's heart wanted to tell him so badly: "I love you."

Yugo slowly looked back up. His eyes were growing large and watery.

"Aww... _geez!" _

However, Kakeru was no longer there. He had already run over to the other side of the table.

"Come here!" he grunted when snatched him up in a big bear hug. He nearly smothered the boy, who buried his face in his guardian's shirt and clung to him dearly. 

Yugo ruffled the boy's black hair and muttered, "Hey, hey... I'm not going anywhere... Wait, are you crying? What's wrong? This is the best Valentine ever!" 

Kakeru might have been strange, silent, and often unresponsive... but he was happy to be with him, despite the lack of parental figures or playmates. He did not care if Yugo was as inept and hopeless as he sometimes felt he was. He did not care if Yugo's career was stable.

He did not care if Yugo was single or not.

No matter whom Yugo was dating, no matter how many times he was dumped, no matter how many times he felt his eyes wandering in the gym showers, and no matter how many times he tortured himself for it, his puppy would be there for him.

None of that mattered. He had his pack, as small as it was, and he was content as content could be. Perhaps someday he would have some sort of companionship on a higher level. Time would tell. That person would come to him when the time was right. For the time now, he had his Kakeru, and he would have gladly chosen Kakeru over any lover in the world right now.

"Now, let's see what we have here..." 

He ripped off the plastic wrap of the box while Kakeru clung even more tightly to him. 

"Oooh, I wonder if there's anything with nuts in it..." he wondered aloud, "Kakeru, you want one?"

He stared up with teary eyes.

"Kakeru, why are you looking at me like I'm gonna drop dead any minute?"


End file.
